16 November 2006

If only my local teachers' unions would do this...

Wow!!! Here is something you hear about just every day:

“Harley-Davidson's union workers approved contract concessions, including cuts in pay and health benefits, that the motorcycle manufacturer said it needed to undertake a $120 million plant expansion project in Milwaukee.”

And this despite the fact that the company chalked up 2005 earnings of just under $1 billion.

Although the concessions grated on workers The local union president, Jim Wheiland, explains the reasoning:

"It burns us a lot to take concessions at a time like this," he told reporters. "We took the emotions out and we looked at the realities, and the realities were that a new plant (elsewhere) would have hurt us worse than taking these concessions."

If only more employees would look at realities, especially when it comes to the minimum wage. But I won’t
go back there again—for a while anyway.

Missing from this story, and sadly, was whether any executives took any cuts in salary, bonuses, or health benefits.

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James Frank Solís
Former soldier (USA). Graduate-level educated. Married 26 years. Texas ex-patriate. Ruling elder in the Presbyterian Church in America.
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